


Put Your Emptiness To Melody, Your Awful Heart To Song

by Emamel



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, I Tried, Slaughter references, super mild though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 01:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18885127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emamel/pseuds/Emamel
Summary: Melanie used to sing all the time





	Put Your Emptiness To Melody, Your Awful Heart To Song

**Author's Note:**

> Title is, of course, from the beautiful 'To noise making (sing)' by Hozier which was 100% the inspiration and reason I wrote this instead of cleaning my house this morning. You can come and find me on Tumblr where I am theaceace - I usually just shout about podcasts, and everyone is welcome to shout with/at me.

Melanie used to sing all the time. In the shower, when she was cooking, when she was editing her videos, in the van. She has a decent voice - not fantastic, but enough to carry a tune, and no one ever complained. 

She stopped, sometime after she got stuck down in the archives; she can’t put her finger on exactly when, and she’s sure that at the time, she didn’t know why. Maybe it the tension that wracked Tim and Martin every time she’d so much as hum, or maybe it was just that the acoustics were weird. 

(Maybe she came across a couple of statements, left deliberately in her path. Maybe she stopped feeling anything good when her voice lilted a certain way. Maybe the fury in her chest was too discordant to put to melody.) 

These days, she doesn’t sing because she’s scared. And there’s a part of her that’s _furious_ about it - that even this has been taken from her, that she’s still, however inadvertently, feeding the Slaughter with her rage and her fear. She tells herself that at least this time, the emotions are hers. Even if they’re wrong, even if she hates them, they’re _hers_. 

She can’t tell her therapist any of this, of course. Can’t tell her there are days when her throat aches from holding back a tune, that even with the radio turned down low and playing the worst pop she’s ever heard, she can’t even let herself mutter along. Everything else, she can more or less twist into some kind of extended metaphor; talk about without talking through. This feels… different. Dangerous, in a way. 

So, she tells Helen. 

Helen, who is silent for a moment, whose outline is perfectly still while every one of her features spins and warps inside the lines. Melanie know by now that this means she’s focusing on something hard enough that she’s letting go of whatever it is that keeps her grounded in reality. 

“I have an idea,” she says slowly, like she’s still considering. “But I’ll need some time to make sure it works." Melanie nods, surprised and grateful in equal measures. She hadn’t asked for anything other than a willing ear; had been sure that there’s nothing to be done. She just needed to get it all off her chest before her emotions started to boil again, setting her blood bubbling up beneath her skin until she felt like her body wasn’t her own any longer. 

They don’t say anything more about it, and after a couple of weeks, Melanie is sure that Helen - not that she’s forgotten, because Helen doesn’t forget anything these days, but that whatever she’d tried hadn’t worked. That her experiment had been left rotting in some snarled-up part of her mind, and that Melanie would just have to carry on as she is. 

Except, Helen wakes her one night, with the backs of her fingers careful against Melanie’s cheek - she always keeps her fingertips to herself, even through Melanie’s insistence that she wouldn’t mind. 

(That there is a part of her - wild still, and impossible to cover with quick sarcasm and gritted apologies - that might even _like_ it.) 

Helen leads her through a door that Melanie recognises in her half-asleep state as leading to neither the hall nor the en-suite. The corridors are dimly lit - a relief, as she still can’t pry her eyes open all the way. 

(Later, when she’s more awake, she’ll realise that’s exactly why Helen kept it so, and something warm will catch beneath her ribs.) 

“Helen, wha-?" 

"The slaughter won’t be able to reach you here,” Helen says, and she sounds a little smug. “I’ve tested it a lot over the past couple of weeks. If you want to sing, you can do it here.” She wakes up a bit just imagining it. 

“Thank you,” Melanie says sincerely. “Honestly, this is just - it’s so - _thank you_.”

Helen nods, but there’s an expectant look on her face, and she hasn’t moved from where she’s sat beside one of the mirrors. 

“You mea- right now?” Melanie asks, a hideous little squeak in her voice. She isn’t used to being shocked like this - usually, surprises these days come in the form of possibly-lethal attacks. 

“I’d like to hear it,” Helen says by way of answering. “If you want to, of course.”

“No, no - I mean, _yes_ , of course I want to, but it’s just, it’s a lot, you know? And I’m not that good, you really don’t have to -" 

"I’d like to,” Helen repeats firmly - as firm as she can be when every part of her is ephemeral. “And if it is too much, then that’s completely up to you. I thought it might be something you would enjoy, after our talk." 

Melanie deliberately shuts her mouth and takes the time to consider. After everything Helen’s done for them - for her - the least she can do in return is not let her mouth run away from her. 

"Not tonight,” she decides eventually. “And maybe not tomorrow. But soon, yeah?” Helen nods, and gestures over the the door, left ajar, that leads back to Melanie’s room. 

“Well, you know how to find me when you feel ready,” she says agreeably.

Melanie starts to head for the door, and pauses, swooping down to press a quick kiss to Helen’s cheek - it tingles like pins and needles where her lips make contact. 

“Thanks!” She calls over her shoulder, and doesn’t look back to see Helen press the points of her fingers against the spot, drawing three beads of blood. 

(She does go back, though, three days later, and sings every terrible song that’s come over the radio and been stuck in her head since then. Helen watches her the whole time, rapt, and at the end, applauds with a sounds like knives in a drawer.)


End file.
